Serbs Force An Exodus From Plain

By CHUCK SUDETIC,

Published: July 26, 1992

HRTKOVCI, Yugoslavia—
A warning to move out of town, stuck to Julijana Molnar's kitchen table with a knife, has not deterred her from selling her watermelons at a roadside stand or speaking out against the terror that has ripped through her hometown.

"How much for the melons?" asked a Serb who drove up in an out-of-town car just as Mrs. Molnar was telling two reporters of the threats she is receiving from Serbian militants.

"Eighty a kilo."

"You shouldn't talk so much," the driver advised with a low, calm voice before pulling away without buying. Yugoslav Breadbasket

Here and in other farm towns across Vojvodina, a Kansas-flat breadbasket of the Danube plain that was incorporated into what became modern Yugoslavia at the end of World War I, Serbs have begun a campaign of intimidation against the region -- a patchwork of Hungarians, Serbs, Croats and 23 other ethnic groups who have preserved their languages and cultures through centuries of wars and border shifts.

Leaving the region in a quickening flow are Catholic Croats and Hungarians, as well as many Eastern Orthodox Serbs. Arriving are Serbian refugees, often with Croatian spouses, driven from their homes in Croatia and Bosnia by war, fear and intimidation as raw as that suffered by the people of Hrtkovci (pronounced HURT-cove-tsi).

In May, Hrtkovci's population of 4,000 was about 80 percent Croatian; now it is about 75 percent Serbian. The newcomers have already overthrown the old local Government and even renamed the place and torn off all the street signs.

"We had 17 different ethnic groups represented here," said Mrs. Molnar, who is part Hungarian, Croatian and Albanian. "We got along fine."

Gangs of Serbs have given the Molnar family and other townspeople just two or three days, and in some cases two or three hours, to sign over their homes in exchange for property in Croatia that the Serbs have abandoned. Several, including the local Roman Catholic priest, have been beaten; one, Milan Stefanac, was found bludgeoned to death in a ditch.

"The police do nothing," Mrs. Molnar said. Residents Frightened Off

Most people were frightened off without being threatened, she said. Some even made hurried trips to Croatia to see the property offered them.

"I invested my entire youth in my home and fields," she said. "I have no intention of abandoning them now. I don't even know anyone in Croatia."

The forced exodus from Hrtkovci began in May after Vojislav Seselj, an ultranationalist Serbian militia leader rallied supporters here and denounced 17 townspeople as traitors.

"I was among the first on the list," said a Hrtkovci businessman who said he was half-Croatian and half-Serbian and asked to remain anonymous.

"They said I am a Croatian fascist, a fundamentalist, and I don't know what else," he said as workers and relatives loaded tools from a shop behind his house into a truck to move to Croatia.

"They tried to kill me on May 15," the businessman said. "They told me I had three days to get out and that I shouldn't take anything with me except what I had on my back." Serbs Deny Using Threats

Serbian newcomers milling around Hrtkovci's main crossroads denied that anyone in town had been threatened. The people who have left, they said, are backers of Croatia's Government and have "fascistoid tendencies."

"These people are getting houses in Croatia that are twice as good as the ones they had here," one Serb said.

"In Croatia, the criminals became the police," said Milan Dardic, a Serb from a Croatian village who 10 days ago moved his wife, two children and 79-year-old mother into a home in Hrtkovci that he said was abandoned. "The local Government here gave an order to open all the empty houses."

Across the road, a Hungarian couple in their eighties trembled as they spoke of the newcomers.

"The whole town has been threatened," said the old woman. "We have our things already packed. "

"We have no children so there is no one even to think about us," she said. "It's just the two of us. Two graves."

Photo: In the Vojvodina region of Yugoslavia, ethnic violence is undermining one of Europe's oldest multi-ethnic communities. A shopkeeper, center, and his family are among the many Croats fleeing the town of Hrtkovci. (Chuck Sudetic/The New York Times)